Site Navigation

Site Mobile Navigation

Stalin Joins Lenin in the East Village

A banner at Cooper Union’s historic Foundation Building on East Seventh Street shows a 1953 Picasso portrait of Stalin. (Photo: Gianni Cipriano for The New York Times)

As an epicenter of global capitalism, New York City does not have too many public markers honoring major communist figures. This is the city that blasted Diego Rivera’s 1933 mural at Rockefeller Center off a wall because it included a portrait of Lenin.
But there is an 18-foot statue of Lenin atop the rental apartment building known as Red Square, on East Houston Street on the boundary between the East Village and the Lower East Side.

On Sunday, the Cooper Union unveiled a three-story-high, 1,872-square-foot banner of Stalin — or more accurately, a 1953 Picasso portrait of Stalin — on the southern facade of its historic Foundation Building, at 7 East Seventh Street, near Third Avenue.

The Picasso portrait is part of a new solo exhibition — entitled “Stalin by Picasso or Portrait of Woman With Mustache” — by the Norwegian artist Lene Berg that explores contemporary politics and the power of representation. The show opens on Wednesday (with a public reception from 6 to 9 p.m.) and ends on Dec. 6.

“Ms. Berg’s compelling use of cold war-era figures in ‘Stalin by Picasso or Portrait of Woman with Mustache’ poses timely questions about political portraiture, how contemporary art relates to real world politics and the power of representation,” said Sara Reisman, associate dean of Cooper Union’s School of Art and the curator of the exhibition.

According to Cooper Union, the portrait on the banner was originally commissioned by Louis Aragon, a Stalinist sympathizer, for publication in a French Communist weekly newspaper, Les Lettres Françaises, but “Picasso’s drawing of Stalin was viewed as unflattering and led to his expulsion from the party.”

At a time when the concept of red and blue states is dissolving (as it needs to) , you give a bit more ammunition to Fox news and talk radio that the democrat run states (with NY as it’s mascot) are turning more left – not only socialist, but even communist.

Also thereby lending more credence to the depraved Mccain campaign’s blaming Obama of being a socialist!

Both Lenin and Stalin advocated a centralized economic system whereby the State would seize the “commanding heights of the economy”. Their aim was that the State should take control of the industrial “means of production”

Today, in America, and in NYC, in particular, the finance industry is a key “means of production”. Henry Paulson, Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, has now effectively taken control of this industry.

Does this mean that Henry gets, if not a statue on Houston Street, at least a banner on Astor Place?

Seattle (the Fremont distinct,that is) has had an incredible statue of Lenin on a main artery. Huge (20 ft high or so), dramatic in that Soviet way, bronze status. Much more real than some pathetic East Village apartment!

. With the current economic crisis plaguing America and the greatest government bailout of Wall STREET; coupled with the recent city council hearings which allowed Mayor Bloomberg to seek a third term, it is appropriate to see Lenin and Stalin in the NYC area; how befitting as the city council acted like the old style Soviet apparatchik quelling the peoples’ will. I submit a third icon…Mayor Bloomberg, thereby completing the troika of Lenin, Stalin and Bloomberg.

Even though Mr. Picasso is losing his luster slowly in many artistic circles I think it’s great to have any alternative to crass Capitalism on display, especially in the East Village.
Stalin was one of the worst people to have ever lived, but George W. Bush is no angel. How many people have died in the Middle East because of this man’s ego? American and Iraqi?
Don’t get me started on Dick Cheney, the Anti Christ.
Socialism? Bring it on. I’ve been waiting for the inevitable for forty five years.

I think the impact of this poster will be decreased considerably by the fact that it doesn’t look anything like Joe Steel. Which is just fine, for while Lenin was a revolutionary idealist, Stalin was a fascist murdering psychopath. The only sad thing about his assassination by Kruschev and Beria was that it wasn’t taken care of earlier.

I am kind of curious about what ‘timely questions’ this raises; maybe ‘can a portrait make Dick Cheney look like a nice guy someday?’. Might have been more interesting to put up a picture of Trotsky, to prove that no one today knows what he looks like.

Bush will step down from office, just as the Constitution foresees it. He won’t stay on until he has finished some revolution and killed of 30 million people. He went to war with the approval of Senator Biden, Clinton, and many others in Congress.

To equate the two is pure irrational hatred. It is saddening to see that a formerly great newspaper is encouraging this behavior.

Was Picasso really expelled for his portrait? He continued to support the party for the rest of his life, downplaying the imporance of political repression in the USSR, and in 1962 was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize //www.heartfield.org

Comment #10. The concentration of state power as envisioned by the revolutionary idealist Lenin laid the groundwork for the genocidal actions of Stalin. When government gets too much power all roads lead to the gulag.

Excellent. Let’s install a 4-story portrait of Hitler on an NYU building next. And then perhaps a typically amicable smiling Mao on the Columbia library. The building might need a few bullet holes for authenticity.

Art is just self-expression, after all, even if the the self is a complete bore. Moral responsibility is so 19th century.

It’s a bit of a relief to see that I’m not the only one questioning the mental process that results in such a project. These “Art” people are obviously either completely ignorant of history, or perhaps truly indifferent to the suffering millions who endured these tyrants. No amount of “artistic” justification will persuade me that these murderers and torturers should be glorified – which these statues and portraits do.

This, however people chose to interpret the art, is by far the most offensive, disrespectful, and outright outrageous thing Cooper Union could possibly do to it’s longstanding neighbors the Ukrainian Community of the East Village. Especially on the 75th Anniversary of the Ukrainian Famine Genocide. Which is recognized in October and November! This is like putting portrait of Adolf Hitler up in front a synagogue in Borough Park on the anniversary of the Holocaust.

First Stalin, next Hitler, Mussolini, Milosevic, Hussein…why don’t we cover all of our institutions of higher learning with the images of dictators and mass murderers…but let’s make sure that we plan accordingly to which ethnic community we most want to rile up and offend.
Ukrainians , who to this day have churches, cultural institutions, social clubs, bars, and restaurants in the East Village, suffered disproportionately as a people under the despotic rule of Stalin.
This year marks the 75th anniversary of Ukraine’s Famine Genocide, during which 10 million, women, children, and men perished as a result of a forced famine orchestrated by Stalin and denied by the west, including by Walter Duranty, New York Times journalist, who traveled to the region and lied about what he saw.
Cooper Union should be ashamed.

This “art” show is only acceptable because it offfends the
voiceless and less powerful. Try this with an image of
Hitler in a jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn and I bet Mayor
Bloomberg would stop it dead.

What's Next

Looking for New York Today?

New York Today is still going strong! Though no longer on City Room, New York Today continues to appear every weekday morning, offering a roundup of news and events for the city. You can find the latest New York Today at nytoday.com or in the morning, on The New York Times homepage or its New York section. You can also receive it via email.

Lookin for Metropolitan Diary?

Metropolitan Diary continues to publish! Since 1976, Metropolitan Diary has been a place for New Yorkers, past and present, to share odd fleeting moments in the city. We will continue to publish one item each weekday morning and a round-up in Monday's print edition. You can find the latest entries at nytimes.com/diary and on our New York section online.

About

City Room®, a news blog of live reporting, features and reader conversations about New York City, has been archived. Send questions or suggestions by e-mail.